George Tannenbaum on the future of advertising,
the decline of the English Language and other frivolities. 100% jargon free.
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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Doing.

As you may or may not know, I'm on Grand Jury duty now, hearing cases involving the Special Narcotics Task Force. I am charged to serve afternoons, from 2-5 until December 30th.

Grand Juries are meant to hear a lot of cases and act on them quickly. We are not brought together to assess guilt or innocence, we are convened to assess whether or not there is reasonable evidence that a crime or crimes have been committed. If we vote yes, the defendants are indicted and will stand trial at a later date.

I call it judicial speed dating. Cops and other law enforcement people come in, present their testimony or expert point of view and they leave. So far to a man (yes, it's been all men) the witnesses are brusque, plain spoken and emphatic.

During my mornings, before I head down to the court house, I encounter just about the opposite. I find myself in meeting after meeting where we often talk about road-maps and game plans and things I can't understand. There is no precision of language and, I suspect, little that is articulated that exists without some agenda.

In fact there is little talk about what we do and how we'll do it and a lot of talk about what we may consider doing sometime in the future or might want to research doing or even talk about researching doing.

This is probably wrong and perhaps someone will correct me.

Somewhere along the way advertising has moved from a craft to a profession. Craft industries make things, they do things. Professions talk.

i agree with you george. my point of view as well, sadly. doesnt apply to advertising only.

looking for positive things is all nice and good. just a bit crap if you cant find any. except making money that is. it would really be great to find positive things instead of pretendig to do. time for a drink. how sad, eh?